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#10. Utilize. This is a haughty, seven-letter word that means "use." There is never an instance in which "utilize" is preferred over "use." The late author David Foster Wallace called it a "noxious puff-word [because] it does nothing that good old use doesn't do." Yet everyone tosses it around--executives, journalists, even your mother. It's a plague. And not the good kind of plague, either.